


birds know it's best to fly

by sandyk



Series: with the sun in my eyes Surprise! [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mary and Peter road trip, referenced child death, wee seven year old on the run with pseudo mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23651119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/pseuds/sandyk
Summary: A patented MJ conspiracy rant in 2014 reminds Peter of a really super formative road trip many years ago.
Relationships: Mary Parker & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker
Series: with the sun in my eyes Surprise! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701469
Kudos: 45
Collections: Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen





	birds know it's best to fly

**Author's Note:**

> For the trope bingo square road trip. No profit garnered, not mine. Title from the Cardigans's If there is a chance. Thanks A!!!! For Mary, I was picturing the actress Allison Tolman from Fargo and Emergence.

He was seven, in the back of the car, the cuts on his head and back already healing. He didn't know her name yet, but she was driving. She turned her head to look back at him. She laughed. "What the fuck was I thinking? What the fuck?"

*

MJ was zooming in on pictures on her laptop. "See, this mysterious spy lady, this Jane Doe, she also 'died' --" MJ paused to make the air quotes. "She was maybe taking out this child soldier assassin."

"At seventeen you're more of a teen soldier assassin," Ned said. 

Peter tugged on his fingers and said nothing. He didn't really have an opinion. MJ said, "But she was a child. She was part of the splinter Hydra sect that started our very own homegrown Red Room." 

"Right," Ned said. "You already explained that part."

MJ stood up and started pacing. She was gesturing while she marched up and down Ned's living room. They were thirteen and they were each others' only friends. MJ said, "We know there was a Red Room. Proven by the existence of Black Widow and further proven by the Hydra files released by Black Widow earlier this year. Highly trained child soldiers spies is a thing people do."

"Evil people do," Ned said. "Don't you think so, Peter?"

"Duh," Peter said. He already hated this conversation and it had only lasted five minutes, if that. MJ got set off and started launching into these tirades. She could be very passionate. 

"Medical experimentation," MJ said, still pacing. "Proven: Tuskegee, Steve Rogers. The beginning of modern gynecology, also. There's another theory that these child -- and teen --" She nodded at Ned. "These soldiers were experimented on. Steve Rogers, the super soldier serum, that's the thing everyone wants to recreate. Another theory is that Howard Stark worked on recreating that serum for years and years. Maybe only got bits of it working. I'm sure he gave some to his son Tony, how do you think Stark survived being Iron Man?"

"By being Iron Man? In the suit?" Ned literally twiddled his thumbs. "You are all over the place on this one, MJ."

"Sure," MJ said. "People, offshoots of HYDRA and other bad guys, they've been trying for years and years to set up a homegrown USA Red Room, with their own boys and girls. They experiment on the kids medically because if you're making a soldier or assassin or spy, you want them to be in the top possible shape. But the problem is, people in the US, we're not great at treating children like objects or soldiers. Something about our culture, we suck at it. We baby our kids. I mean, our white kids. Obviously everyone loves their kids. But white middle class kids are this special kind of, to some people. Like, I read this great entry --" she hunkered down by her laptop again. She started reading about how people in the US thought of children as small and weak and needed to be protected. It was well-written, Peter thought.

"The point is," MJ said. "The experiments fail and only a few kids make it. The kids that make it, some of them freak out. Sometimes, people working on the kids or people who just encounter the kids? Try to stop the experiments and rescue the kids. So most of these projects are completely abandoned. But there are a few. They would be our age or a few years older. They could walk among us." 

Ned said, "Is all this you confessing to us? Are you a teen super soldier?"

MJ shrugged. "I don't think so. Maybe I wouldn't remember. Maybe I was brainwashed."

"Are they white supermacists? Maybe Peter's the secret super soldier," Ned said. He sounded bored. He was already looking at something on his own laptop. It looked like a Transformers wiki. 

MJ said, "No, not white supermacist. They were an offshoot of HYDRA, less into the race thing. They preyed on kids who get left behind, neglected, pushed out, no one watching them."

*

At first, he only remembered waking up in the car. There was the woman, she was taking care of him. She stopped the car and waved for him to get out. She called him "baby," and he followed her. She bought him clothes, picking things at random. He went to the bathroom in the store by himself. He washed his hands and then looked at his face in the mirror. He scrubbed at the cuts on his head. She was waiting for him by the shoe display. 

She loaded all the bags into the trunk of the car and handed him a juice box and some granola bars. She just kept driving. He fell asleep when it was dark and woke up as the sun was rising. "Where're we going?"

"South. To the end of the country and then we go to Cuba. I have friends there. Then, I think, we circle back up to the States. I have some ideas, somewhere you'll be safe." 

"Okay," he said. He was bored but he said nothing. He knew that was how he was supposed to behave. 

They switched cars twice before they got to the Keys. She called him "Luke" and "Wayne" and "bro." He knew she meant him so he always responded. He called her "Mom" and then "Mary," because that was the name he heard her say to someone else that time. 

She bought him books but she didn't know anything about kids. She bought him a board book for babies, and a book labeled YA and another one about third graders. He kept all three tied up with a string and made sure to take them each time they changed cars or boats. 

He started thinking of her as Mary. She was much better at changing her identity than he was. He always looked like a seven year old white boy with brown hair. She changed her hair color, wore glasses or didn't, and somehow seemed to lose or gain twenty pounds depending on how she dressed. 

When they got to Cuba, she brought him to a doctor. He was perfectly behaved as the man took blood samples and gave him x-rays. The doctor and Mary spoke in Spanish but he understood. The doctor said the kid was fine, perfect health, nothing weird. Mary nodded. 

From Cuba, they went to Mexico. Mary changed things up all the time. For a week, they stayed in a hotel and she was his bored mother. She called him George. She bought him a dvd player he could put on his lap and then a ton of movies. Most of them were horror films but he never really flinched. 

They left the dvds behind and the next ten days he was hiding in a closet while Mary was out and about solo. Even though he still didn't remember anything, when Mary put a gun on the floor next to him he was able to clean it, reload it and then he held it, pointed it like he could tell the weight and kickback. Maybe he could. Mary said, "I'm leaving you a knife. Guns are too loud." She showed him where the food was and where to use the bathroom. She helped him set up a TV which he watched at the lowest possible volume. He could still hear it okay. During the night she would come check on him. It was a little scary, but he understood the importance, somehow, of changing things up. 

Right after that they drove for a few days and she was a clingy mother to a clingy son. Whenever they stopped and walked around, he hugged her waist and barely let go. "Mommy," he would say, over and over again. She cut all his hair off at that part of the trip. At night they stayed in motels, and she would pat his head and tuck him in tight.

He did start to remember things. The school. They were pretty regimented there, not that he thought of it that way. But they didn't have weekends or holidays. He remembered the other kids. After six weeks, they were in Texas and slowly going north. He said to Mary, "What happened to the other ones? I remember them."

She ignored him for five minutes. Then she said, "Some of them died. Do you remember that?"

"No," he said. 

"I was trying," she said. "I was trying to get you all out. But those fuckheads realized it, blew up the whole place. I know they got three of you out, I got you out. There's another six or seven, I don't know what happened. After you're okay, I'll find them." She looked back at him. "I promise."

One week, they were both in an apartment that somehow Mary had the key for. She took him to the park in the mornings, somewhere in Oklahoma, and called him "Harry." 

She started focusing on some version of homeschooling when they weren't driving around. She gave him puzzle books and had him watch a lot of documentaries. They didn't really keep much of anything as they moved from car to car and state to state. He made sure to keep his books at every step, though. 

When they got to New Jersey, she said, "Here we go." She pulled into a driveway of a townhouse. She had him get into a suitcase, a ruse they hadn't used in a while. She brought him into the house and then opened the suitcase. It was a pretty ordinary living room. Someone lived here. This person had a few personal pictures, a bunch of books. Mary said, "Go upstairs, the bedroom right to the left is yours. Take your things. Take a nap."

He was pretty worried that maybe she was abandoning him but she could have done that any time in the last three months. He took his new backpack upstairs to the room. It looked like a guest room. He took out his clothes and his dvd player and his books. He just put them on top of the chest of drawers next to the twin bed. He heard Mary downstairs, running the sink and then turning on the TV. He got in bed and did fall asleep. 

He woke up because people were talking. It was dark outside. He waited at the top of the stairs, listening. "So you're just, what? Mary. What the fuck?" That was a man.

Mary said, "I told you. You're going to adopt him, I'll make it work."

"We haven't talked in two years --"

"Come downstairs," Mary said, clearly not addressing the man she was talking to. 

He went downstairs. The man looked shocked. The man said, "What, what's your name, kid?"

Mary said, "Let's pick one. What's your brother's name?"

The man said, "What? Benjamin." 

"Okay," Mary said. She bent down and held his face. She said, "Alliteration. Alliteration is a good way to pick a name." She looked into his eyes and he waited. "Peter," she said. "That's your name. Peter Benjamin Parker. Peter."

Peter nodded. Mary let go of him. She said, "Richard Parker, this is Peter."

Richard was still shocked for the rest of the night. Mary made dinner for both of them and told Richard she'd have all the papers for him tomorrow. She kept saying it would be good for him. "You'll be great at this."

In the morning, Peter went downstairs slowly. Richard was sitting at the table, reading the paper. He just stared at Peter. He kept staring while Peter went and found a bowl and poured himself some cereal, got milk and then carried the bowl to the table. He climbed into the other chair and started eating. Richard said, "You want the sports section?"

Peter just blinked. Richard shook his head. He pushed a puzzle book across the table to Peter. "Mary said you like puzzles. I like puzzles, too."

"Good," Peter said. It was a big book of word puzzles. Peter opened it and flipped past the first and second pages, Richard had already done those. So he started on the one on page three. It looked really hard. "Awesome," Peter said quietly. 

"Awesome," Richard said. 

Mary came back with a folder and sat down at the table with them like it was their every day routine. 

She stayed with them for six weeks. Richard went off to work and Mary "arranged" things. After a month, they moved to Queens. Mary took Peter to a government place, he answered questions a bored woman asked him. Mary patted his arm and said, "Isn't he great?" 

"He can start school next week," Mary said. "He's not, they were talking about putting him in fifth grade or something like that, but I think he's better off in third grade. Socializing with kids his own age, you know?"

"Sure," Richard said. "A great parenting decision." Richard winked at Peter. Peter laughed. 

School was different. Different from his old school, which Mary told him to expect. She'd walked him through what the average day would be like. He felt pretty prepared. It went okay. The learning part was easy. He thought he was pretty likable. He didn't make any friends his first day or his second day. 

Mary came into his bedroom to say goodbye. "You're okay now," she said. She ruffled his hair. "I told you. I have to get the other kids."

Peter said, "You could stay. You could come back." He hugged her hard. 

"We'll see," she said. "You'll be fine. Richard's already a good dad."

"I love you, Mommy," he said.

She sighed. She squeezed him and let go. "I love you, too. But now you're just a kid. You had a normally bad childhood, and I became your foster parent and then Richard and I adopted you. You're just a regular genius kid." She hugged him again. 

"I love you," he said, again. 

The next morning was a Saturday. Richard came into his room and sat on his bed. "Let's go out to breakfast, okay, kiddo?"

"Okay," Peter said. "Okay, Dad."

Richard nodded. "Yup, that's me."

It really did work out okay. Richard was a good dad. He introduced Peter to his brother and his wife, Peter really liked them. They were both visibly weirded out that Richard had adopted Peter but they got over it. 

As much as Peter remembered, he compartmentalized. He didn't think about it. How often did it even come up? He thought about school and movies and his one friend, Ned. He had a friend. 

He knew, if he really thought about it, he had a made up birthday, an assumed year. He could be eight or nine or younger. But that really wasn't worth thinking about. It was much easier to know June 15th, 2001. He was born June 15th, 2001. 

He did gymnastics for fun and ran track for fun. He was good at all of it. He never really got sick. 

Richard died in a perfectly normal way, a very normal train derailment. If anyone was doing anything, they probably did it for someone else on the train. There were fourteen dead. 

He looked for Mary at the funeral, but he wasn't sure if he saw her. 

*

"So," Peter said. "What's all, you were talking about that lady and the girl."

"Yeah," MJ said. "That just happened. I told you, these reddit forums and the other ones on the SHIELD files, there's so much happening. Two weeks ago, there was an explosion, small, contained, at a dam in the pacific northwest."

"That's so vague," Ned said. "That's three states and they all have dams. Come on, MJ."

MJ glared at Ned. Peter was the only one not enraptured by a laptop. He was looking at his hands. MJ said, "But it could have been bigger. It could have been huge. Instead only the girl died and probably the older woman. They didn't find the body."

"What, what do you think? Like the woman was the handler and the girl was the super soldier?" Peter rubbed up and down on his thigh and stopped. He just stopped fidgeting and relaxed.

MJ nodded. MJ said, "Maybe. More likely the woman was trying to stop the teen super soldier." MJ stopped glaring and really looked at him. Her face was soft. She said, "Maybe. I mean, it's all probably made up to distract us."

Peter smiled. "That's not what you think, MJ."

"No," she said. "But I do think, like, I like to think that it didn't work, because we think kids need to be protected. I'd like to think that's true. It's not. But it's nice."

Peter said, "I bet it was true in some cases." 

MJ said, "In some cases. There was a case in the files, a place that blew up in 2008 in North Florida. You can find actual news on that one. It's pretty sad, though, ten dead kids, some kind of industrial place. But the kids were like foster kids, or ones they couldn't identify."

"That's a total bummer," Ned said. "Are you bringing this up to make Peter feel better?"

"It was probably someone trying to help the kids," MJ said.

Ned said, "You're really bad at this."

Peter said, "Can we not do conspiracy theories for at least the rest of the night?"

"I'm always up for that," Ned said. 

"Fine," MJ said. "Just the rest of the night, though, these SHIELD files are golden."

"Peter," Ned said. "You shouldn't be upset. This is all a total cliche. It's a collection of bad science fiction tropes and conspiracies. Being scared of kids and experimenting on kids, seriously, there's a million books about that stuff."

MJ said, "Just because it has thematic meaning doesn't mean it can't be true."

"Cool," Peter said. "You guys are the best. I'm not upset. I'm not. I just find this, it's disturbing."

*

In the morning, after Ned and MJ left, Peter had brunch with May and Ben. Ben did all the cooking. Peter said, "So I've noticed we never talk about me being adopted. Not, like, we, but you never say anything to your friends and stuff. I don't think any of my friends know. Or even my teachers. Not that they need to."

"Well," May said. "Because it makes us worry. Mary could be, well, she was --"

Peter frowned. "You think --"

"No," Ben said. "We don't think she did anything bad. She wouldn't steal a well-cared for kid. But she wouldn't necessarily follow the law when it comes to a kid who wasn't cared for."

"So you're concerned somewhere out there there's, like, a shady family missing the kid they never took care of?" Peter smiled. 

May laughed. "You make it sound ridiculous. But seriously, Mary was wild."

"I remember," Peter said. "I remember my mom." 

He went into his bedroom and took his three books out of the drawer he hid them in. He ran his finger along the spines of each book. Maybe he could figure out if he was safe to contact her. Let her know he really was okay. He was a regular genius kid and no one was tracking him on reddit. Probably.


End file.
